Business vented its anger yesterday at the looming threat of power cuts if Britain suffers a harsh winter this year, blaming failures in the planning system for the lack of sufficient storage now the North Sea no longer supplies a surplus of energy.

Sir Digby Jones, director-general of the CBI employers' body, warned that his members were "really worried that this winter they're going to have the switch thrown on them". He told a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference that Britain had only 11 days of spare gas capacity, compared with about 55 days in other European countries.